'Win or lose— What matter? We fight for freedom of spirit.' Thus writes Ienaga Saburo, preeminent Japanese historian and courageous plaintiff in three lawsuits (1965D1997) against the government seeking to end Ministry of Education 'certification' of textbooks, which even today constrains discussion of Japan's actions in China and elsewhere in the Pacific. The cases arose specifically from government censorship of Ienaga's forthright textbook accounts of the Pacific War and of such controversial events as the Nanjing massacre. The questions he has forced into the public arena are central both to the nature of Japanese democracy and to issues of war and memory. They have shaped Japanese politics and frictions with its Asian neighbors and with the United States for half a century. Spanning Japan's watershed twentieth century, this compelling autobiography traces Ienaga's childhood, education, wartime experience, academic career, and the two major battles that occupied his later years. One was the fight against the relocation of Tokyo University of Education to a new 'research city' outside Tokyo; the other was the fight against Ocertification.O Neither battle ended in victory for Ienaga, but as he eloquently expresses in the short poem above, defeat did not make them any less worth fighting. Minear provides a masterly introduction of the man and his times and brings the story to the present with excerpts from Ienaga's court testimony and recent interviews. Illustrated with photos and textbook extracts, this volume brings to life the experience and intellectual odyssey of one of the leading shapers of contemporary Japan. It will be widely read and used by Japan specialists as well as all scholars and general readers concerned with issues of academic freedom and war and peace.
Ienaga Saburo (1913-), now retired, was a professor at Tokyo University of Education from 1944 to 1977 and the author of dozens of books (several translated into English, German, French, Spanish, and Russian) on Buddhist thought, on art, and on social and intellectual history. He remains one of Japan's _ and the world's _ foremost intellectuals. Richard H. Minear is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Dr. Seuss Goes to War.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Translator’s Preface Chapter 2 Translator’s Introduction Chapter 3 Recollections from Infancy Chapter 4 Education in the Period of Taisho Democracy and Its Effects on Me Chapter 5 Drawn to History: Recollections of Middle School Chapter 6 A Copernican Revolution in My Educational Life Chapter 7 Student Life after the Extinction of the Student Movement Chapter 8 My Life as a Scholar, Begun in the Era of the “Dark Valley” Chapter 9 My State of Mind in the Period Immediately after the Defeat Chapter 10 The Beginning of the Reverse Course and the Maturing of My Social Consciousness Chapter 11 To the Filing of the Textbook Lawsuits Chapter 12 The Textbook Trials and the Struggle at Tokyo University of Education
What People are Saying About This
Carol Gluck
Out of one man's frailty of health and youthful failure to resist aggressive war came a lifetime of courageous protest against the power of the state to control freedom of thought in postwar Japan. Ienaga tells of his decades-long court battle on behalf of truth in school textbooks in this modest but moving memoir of a dedicated 'historian of conscience.'
Richard Falk
This autobiographical narrative tells a fascinating and stirring story that is virtually unknown in America. It centers on the long, brave struggle by Japan's leading historian to challenge the official custodians of historical truth who control Tokyo's Ministry of Education. Japan's Past, Japan's Future provides deep insight into the refusal to allow textbooks for all ages used throughout Japan to portray the grim realities of the country's dark history.
Howard Zinn
Ienaga Saburo has long carried on a courageous battle in Japan to free textbooks from government control. He has boldly exposed how history has been distorted in the interest of national pride. His story is an important and inspiring one.
